Paternity leave help fathers to be present during and few days after the birth of the child and thus helps in fostering father-child attachment. Read on to know about the paternity leave in India and importance of taking paternity leave.People started talking about paternity leave in India almost a decade ago. However, not many are aware that the central government has a mandated paternity leave policy that provides leave for a central government employee for a period of 15 days so that he can take care of his wife and the newborn. This leave can be taken only when the father has less than two surviving children and he can avail the leave of 15 days before or within 6 months from the date of birth of the child.
If the father does not avail paternity leave within that period, it will be considered as lapsed. He will be paid the leave salary equal to what he draws before taking the leave. The law gives this provision in the case of
adoption as well. This leave is authorized for government employees in India and there is no law that instructs the private sector to make it compulsory. It is open to interpretation by companies individually.
Importance of Paternity Leave
Paternity leave gives the
expecting father an opportunity to develop stronger bond with his child from its birth. This is helpful only when the father is not thinking about meeting deadlines, clients and deals and achieving targets and other work stress.
Supporting Wife during Labour
Nowadays, fathers are allowed to
be with their wives in the labour as well. They understand how painful the whole process is and this helps them have better and strong bonding with their wives too along with the child. The society has unnecessarily kept fathers out of all this for a long time.
Sharing Parenting Responsibility
Today people understand that parenting is a shared responsibility of both, father and the mother. The presence of father at the time of
childbirth makes him sensitive towards the special needs of the child. The experience will bring more caring, affectionate and better fathers.
Many women are career oriented these days and at the same time many are postponing motherhood simply because this would impact their career. Paternity leave will make them feel that their partners are also involved and participate in parenting the child equally. This will promote sharing of the responsibility and this is definitely going to make bonds between husbands and wives stronger along with having a special bonding with the child.
Building Family
Paternity leave benefits the whole family along with increasing the sense of confidence and comfort with parenting in men. They take in child-care duties openly and get involved in child’s life years earlier.
Family Friendly Policies
According to the law, if the paternity leave is not taken within a specific time period it gets lapsed. This will also lead many men to take some day off and welcome their bundle of joy with a free mind. This makes the father take part in the family and he starts taking larger share of responsibility at home and that too very early.
A stronger
father child attachment and equal division of responsibility at home will make fathers more responsible. Countless studies have shown that both, the father and the child get benefited by this early bonding.
However, many men do not take paternity leave because they fear hurting their career, sacrificing income and a strong work ethic. This is keeping them away from their newborns. They are not ready to take an extended time off from their work to spend with the newborn.
When can the paternity leave be taken? How does paternity leave help father? How does paternity leave benefit the mother? Discuss here. 
